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I skip over the material check. From a glance, Black's pieces are well-oriented for a Kingside smash. There are only two major candidates: 26. ...fxg2+ and 26. ...Qxh2+ (look for checks, captures, and threats!).

As the pawn capture rapidly leads to nowhere, the queen sack is my primary concern. This kind of sac (Qxh2/7, followed by moving a rook to the h-file) is a fairly common theme. A bonus is that it's usually an easy move to calculate.

An Englishman: Good Evening: A familiar motif to fans of the King's Indian Defense or the Old Indian, but a beautiful finish in any case. Here's a famous game where the Queen sacrifice takes place on a nearby square: Averbakh vs Kotov, 1953. The idea remains the same: Her Majesty sacrifices herself to lure the White King into the open, the Rook draws the King further into the open, and the other pieces finish off the monarch.

Doktorn: <Phony Benoni>I actually went for 29...Rf6#. More obvious to me looking several moves ahead. Although when finally on move 29... I would probably play 29...g5# since I would probably be able to see it and, as you say, we all want to mate with a pawn.

rilkefan: <Phony Benoni: Odd how everyone so far, in the 29.Kf4 variation, is finding 29...g5# instead of 29...Rf6#.>

That's the only line I considered - the comic element of the rook return appealed to me. Sadly I didn't consider 29.Kh2, but as soon as I saw that white couldn't get anything over to or from the kside I was going to play Qh2 regardless.

Gilmoy: <An Englishman: The idea remains the same: Her Majesty sacrifices herself to lure the White King into the open, the Rook ...>

More generally, it's a variation on the Anastasia pattern. The canonical instant-win Anastasia requires a 3-deep g-wall, e.g. Ne2, which acts as a virtual rook owning g, so that Rh+ is #. (N.B. This requires a rook lift to make Rh+ feasible, so it's a checklist item when you're planning, and conversely a mental trigger when you see it. For newbies: You want a rook lift anyways for the cheesy Rh6-Qh2# threat.)

Sometimes you can't establish the 3-deep g-wall first. But, as <An Englishman> points out, the sac still works, by sparking a kinghunt into a 4-on-0 or so. This does seem more typical of KID (and KIA as White), when the pawn structure tends to prevent you from controlling g1 laterally. (Conjecture: Does Benoni's Bd4(+) enable more instant-win Anastasia sacs?)

Funny: The Anastasia pattern is a swell counter to the Rg1 defense. (Corollary: Don't try this against the KID Bg1, haha.) This crops up in many f3-lines against a fianchetto: swap off the LSBs, then f3 + Qh3, and the defensive Rg1[] is a helpmate because it completes the 3-deep g-wall for Black.

Here we see the position after 29. Kf4 Rf6#. It's a pleasing composition where every remaining black piece combines to give the mate. Perhaps the artist is making a comment about the nature of society. The white king is destroyed because he is alone. Black triumphs because his pieces work together. A metaphor for how a just society can support you, but an unjust society can leave you feeling alienated.

This picture shows the artist in a playful mood. The white king is brought down by a lowly pawn after 29. Kf4 g5#. And he leaves us a delightful puzzle - what is the point of the black rook on h6? On the one hand, we could say that the rook is redundant. And some might say that this devalues the picture because it no longer shows a pure mate. But I think the artist was trying to emphasise that might isn't everything. The black rook, like the white queen and rooks, is a heavy piece doing nothing while mate is delivered by a pawn. And that surely tells us something about pride and humility.

And finally in this tryptich we have what some regard as the artist's darkest work. This was painted shortly after he chopped off his nose (somewhat in the style of Van Gogh) and presented it to a lover. Many have argued that his ear would have been a slightly less drastic facial organ to self-mutilate, but who are we to question an artist's inspiration? A rare example of autorhinoplasty, you might say.

Here we see the position after 29. Kh2 Bxf2+ 30. Bh3 Rxh3#. The white king has tried to run away from the attack and has been brutally chopped down by the black bishops and rook. There is a degree of violence in this painting that we do not see in the other two. While they deal with themes of entrapment, this painting shows the white defences being brushed aside. The Bh3 is summarily dispatched as the black rook crashes through. Where the first two showed public executions, this is a vicious street mugging.

The name of this third piece? Ah yes, I thought you might ask that. The official name is "cowardice" in reference to the king's attempted flight to h2. But the artist must have had other things on his mind. If you look closely at the bottom right hand corner you can see that he has written a different title in what looks suspiciously like his own blood.

But somehow we didn't think that "Oh, nuts, that really really hurts" sounded quite so good in the gallery guide book.

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